My parents gave me a worm farm for my birthday and it is awesome. The worms eat organic scraps and excrete worm castings and ‘worm rum’ that is great for the garden. And it’s pretty cool to have an army of worms.
Opening the box
It’s cold and dark outside, so I set the farm up in the hall to start with. Now that it is all set up and smelling of sweetly rotting kitchen scraps, I’m planning on moving it out to the shed.
Soaking the bedding block
The first step is to soak the bedding block in water. Apparently, the worms will happily eat the paper wrapping so it went in the bucket as well.
Bedding slurry
The bedding block absorbed all the water, turning first into a muddy slurry, and then into a damp hummus which I spread into the lower tray.
Bedding layer
The worms are tiger worms. They were much smaller than I imagined they would be. They come in a mix of dirt and shredded newspaper, which I spread out over the bedding layer. There are worms in the picture below, but they’re hard to see. Worms hate the light so they all fled into the dirt when I turned them out of their bag.
Can open, worms everywhere
The next tray sat snugly on top of the bedding layer. I spread some delicious rotting kitchen scraps on the tray to lure the worms up through the holes in the tray.
Food for worms
Then I covered the food with wet newspaper, put the lid on and left the worms to work their magic. I did sneak a peak under the lid later in the evening, and one brave little worm had blazed a trail to the food layer and was wriggling around in it. I have high hopes for my worms.
